August is Aqua

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Isn't it fun to start the month with a new color?  August is aqua (aka aquamarine, turquoise, teal, blue-green, cyan, etc.) for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

 I was excited to see what the new color was, especially since I found out when we were on our way home from a traveling vacation.  I couldn't wait to get started, having been away from my treadle for 10 whole days.

Our trip was sort of unusual.  My husband is very interested in (okay, obsessed with) fossils, especially of early mammals, and wanted to see the collections in some of our Midwestern museums.  I was happy to go along with that, especially when we threw in a living history museum (The Henry Ford, in the photo above), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, plus antique malls and quilt stores along the way.

I took along this UFO to sew by hand in the evenings.  It's an English paper piecing project from at least 20 years ago.

On the back, you can see the "papers" I used.  They are mostly those cards that fall out of magazines.  I'm removing the papers once a hexagon is surrounded by other hexagons.

 Don't expect to see this finished soon!  It takes a long time to hand sew these rows together.  I'm hoping this will be the center of a quilt, but it could turn out to be a table runner.

This is the only actual quilt I saw in any of the museums.  It's a Lone Star, made by a Native American woman for a family member.  These quilts are traditional gifts for graduations, weddings, etc.

It was hand quilted, in a Baptist Fan pattern.  I would never think to quilt a Lone Star this way, but it was absolutely beautiful.

There were several quilts for sale in the antique malls, but I resisted.  Love this scrappy 1940s/1950s Bowtie.

The price was right on this late 1800s/early 1900s star quilt, but the poor thing has been loved to death.  Still inspiring to see, though.

 I bought this little group of second hand fabric at the antique malls...

and this gorgeous collection of new fabric at a quilt shop called Seams So Easy in Fairfield, Ohio.  Check out the cat print in the center!

This is the logo painted on the outside of the shop.  I can vouch for their friendly helpful service.

It's great to get away for a little while, especially after last year.  But it did show us that the pandemic is not entirely over, and things are not quite back to normal.  Rules kept changing about buying museum tickets ahead (or not) and wearing masks (or not), and some restaurants and shops were still closed or only available online.  It's going to take time, especially with cases on the rise again.  We just took everything as it came, and did the best we could to keep ourselves and others safe.

It feels good to be home again.  I was so happy to get back to babysitting my little guys!  Little Buddy and I were making art projects and playing with dinosaurs here.

And Baby Buddy is getting a little too brave on the slide at the playground!

I hope you're enjoying going through your aqua scraps.  I know I am!  I almost forgot about this Reluctant Dragon print.

 

Have a lovely week!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap